# Funder Search

Describe your cause and find the US private foundations whose past grants match
it. Foundations are ranked by MEANING: WIZE compares your description with the
purpose of every grant in IRS Form 990-PF filings (grants paid), so it finds a
funder whose grants say "early literacy" when you wrote "reading tutoring".

Each foundation comes with its EIN, total giving, its median grant across every
grant it reported, one sentence on why it matched, and up to three example
grants: recipient, amount, year and purpose.

Free, published by WIZE, the AI fundraising platform for nonprofit development
teams: https://app.wizenow.com/tools/funder-search/

## What you get, and what you don't

- **Private foundations only.** The data is IRS Form 990-PF. Community
  foundations, corporate giving programs, government funders and donor-advised
  funds are not in it, so it is never the whole funder landscape.
- **A preview.** Up to 10 foundations and 3 example grants each. A
  foundation's complete grant history is in WIZE.
- **Topical fit, not eligibility.** `match_score` is 1 minus cosine distance
  (higher is closer). Check geography, grant size, and whether the foundation
  accepts unsolicited proposals before you apply.
- **"Busy" is never "no funders."** A timeout or an outage returns an error
  (`busy`, `temporarily_unavailable`), never an empty list. An empty list means
  no foundation's grants matched closely.
- **Figures are as reported** on each foundation's own filings; the latest tax
  year is usually incomplete.

Grant data: GivingTuesday Data Commons (ODbL), derived from IRS 990-PF filings.

## Use it from an agent

No account needed. Three searches a day without a key; 100 a day with a free
key. Ask for one with `POST https://app.wizenow.com/api/tools/funder-search/api-key/`
and `{"email": "[email protected]"}`, then send it as the `X-Wize-Tools-Key`
header (or `Authorization: Bearer`). The same key works on board search.

```
curl -X POST https://app.wizenow.com/api/tools/funder-search/ \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'X-Wize-Tools-Key: wztk_...' \
  -d '{"query": "after-school literacy tutoring for immigrant families"}'
```

```json
{
  "total_funders": 10,
  "ranking": "semantic",
  "funders": [
    {
      "name": "EXAMPLE FAMILY FOUNDATION",
      "ein_formatted": "84-1234567",
      "state": "CO",
      "match_score": 0.712,
      "typical_grant": 15000,
      "why_matched": "Closest matching grant: $25,000 to Example Literacy Center (Denver, CO) in 2023 for \"after-school literacy tutoring\".",
      "example_grants": [{"recipient": "Example Literacy Center", "amount": 25000, "year": 2023}]
    }
  ],
  "quota": {"limit": 100, "remaining": 99, "keyed": true, "period": "day"},
  "source_url": "https://app.wizenow.com/tools/funder-search/"
}
```

Inputs:

- `query` (required): the cause in plain words: what the work is and who it
  serves. A sentence works better than keywords.
- `limit`: how many foundations, 1-10.

There are no geography or grant-size filters (they are refused, not ignored):
results span the whole US. Each foundation's state, its typical grant, and its
example grants' recipient places and amounts are in the response, so filter on
those.

Over the allowance you get HTTP 429 with `free_key_url`. Also available over MCP
at `https://app.wizenow.com/mcp/tools/` as `wize_funder_search` (one search per
request), and described by https://app.wizenow.com/api/tools/openapi.json

## Built by WIZE

WIZE learns your organization's mission, voice, and donor relationships, then
helps your team plan, produce, and coordinate fundraising campaigns in minutes
instead of weeks. Try it free: https://app.wizenow.com/start-a-trial/